Comfort and support pledge

A COMMITMENT to always offer support to Sidmouth Victoria Hospital has come from its Comforts Fund chairman.

A COMMITMENT to always offer support to Sidmouth Victoria Hospital has come from its Comforts Fund chairman.

At its annual meeting, Graham Vincent said: "I would like to assure you we will continue to mobilise, encourage, foster and maintain the interest of the public in the patients and staff and the support of the work of the hospital by means of combined voluntary services.

"The committee always has to be aware of changes, both in comforts to the patients and techniques. We will always give this our priority."

It was a busy 60th year for the fund in 2007, with the completion and opening of the ambitious Phase Four improvements to provide eight single and one double ensuite rooms, a nurses' station, store and boiler rooms, as well as seven corridor wards for outpatients being revamped.

"This is our most ambitious project to date," said Mr Vincent, who said the next stage would be to demolish the physiotherapy building and build a new kitchen, re-site physiotherapy where the entrance is and put the new entrance where the existing kitchens are based.

The Comforts Fund has just spent around £30,000 to provide a new specialist operating couch for its theatre, a cardiac monitor, arthroscopy sets, shoulder shavers and other equipment.

l See more reports from the meeting in next week's Sidmouth Herald.